This document was created on 3/11/03, and last updated on 17/6/11,
by James Jacobs of Amigan Software. It deals with 25 selected CGA games for the
original IBM-PC. Please email us
with any corrections to this document.

Alley
CatIBM 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Bouncing BabiesDave Baskin 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility:
100%

BricksVincent Bly 198? DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 99%

Bushido: The Way of the WarriorEbenel 1983 DOSBox 0.74
Compatibility: 100%

Castle
AdventureKevin Bales 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Chomp? 198? DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Congo
BongoSega 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Cosmic
CrusaderFuntastic 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

DecathlonIBM 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Dig
DugAtari 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Floppy
FrenzyWindmill Software 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Frogger? 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Hard
Hat MackElectronic Arts 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

MonopolyDon Gibson 1985 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Montzeuma's Revenge? 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

MoonbugsWindmill Software 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility:
100%

NovatronVeri-Soft Works 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility:
100%

PangoSheng-Chung Liu 1983 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

ParatrooperOrion Software 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility:
100%

Pitstop ][Epyx 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Round
42Elven Software 1986 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

ShamusAtari 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Space
StrikeMichael Abrash 1982 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

SpacewarBill Seiler 1985 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

ZaxxonSega 1984 DOSBox 0.74 Compatibility: 100%

Game Help

Alley Cat

To get the joystick to work, you should edit your DOSBOX.CONF to
have cycles=520 and timed=TRUE. If you still have problems, delete
mapper.txt.

Bushido: The Way of the
Warrior

The numeric keypad is used, as follows:

Lt

Up

Rt

Lt

Tu

Rt

Lt

Dn

Rt

Tu: Turn around Lt: Walk/punch/kick Left Rt: Walk/punch/kick
Right Up: Jump/punch/kick Up Dn: Squat/punch/kick Down

Traps are always laid in the direction you are currently facing, left
or right (you cannot lay them at intersections), and are impassable.

A weakened enemy which hits a trap is healed.

All controls are press-and-release. They are buffered, and fetched
at intersections, similar to Pango. However, unlike Pango, there are
no key repeat problems and therefore you could hold down the keys if
desired.
You cannot stop moving, except by leaning against something.

Frogger

The default keys are A, Z, ' and ` (backtick/grave) for up, down, left
and right, respectively. All controls are press-and-release.

Hard
Hat Mack

The Alt key will bring up the key redefinition screen. The
spacebar will start the game. F2 to quit to DOS. F9 to calibrate
joystick. All controls are press-and-release.

Pango

All controls are press-and-release. You cannot stop moving, except by
leaning against something or using the stop key.
To get the joystick to work, you should edit your DOSBOX.CONF to
have cycles=520 and timed=TRUE. If you still have problems, delete
mapper.txt. If you still have problems, try cycles=540.
The game maintains a buffer (ie. a queue) of keyboard input.
Whenever you are not "between" tiles (ie. moving from one tile to
another), the game fetches a keystroke from the keyboard queue and acts
on it. If the keystroke results in no movement (eg. stop, or turn only),
another keystroke will be fetched very quickly after; otherwise, you
have to wait until you have moved a distance of one tile before another
keystroke is fetched. It is thus not possible to turn (even backwards),
nor stop, while "between" tiles. You can press the appropriate key at
any time but it will be queued and not acted on until you are no longer
"between" tiles.
The game should have turned off key repeat but neglects to do this.
(Indeed, there is no BIOS call to do this on a PC/XT; the game should
probably have used direct keyboard hardware access to get its input. Or,
when fetching keys from the queue, the game could just discard any
"keystroke" that is the same as the previously pressed key, and fetch the
next key in the queue instead.)
Therefore, if you hold down a key for too long, the game will put many
copies of the key into the buffer, and you will have to wait until these
are "used up" (at the rate of one per tile). So you must use the "press
and release" technique rather than holding down keys.
There doesn't seem any way to configure the typematic rate via the
DOSBox GUI nor configuration file.
What you need to do is to run SLOW (within DOSBox) before running Pango.
After you quit the game, you will probably want to run NORMAL (or indeed
FAST). These files are
here.
Or just use a joystick.

Shamus

Cursor keys to move. Cursor key and Alt to fire.
There are keyboard problems when holding movement keys for long periods.
Running SLOW first (or using a joystick instead)
might help.

Space
Strike

The default keys are Z for left, C for right, X to stop, and spacebar
to fire. All controls are press-and-release. You cannot stop moving,
except by leaning against the level edges or using the stop key.

Space Strike is an .IMG file; therefore it is run like this:

BOOT SPACESTR.IMG

Emulator Usage

Edit the following entries in DOSBOX.CONF:

machine=cga cycles=520

And add the following lines to DOSBOX.CONF, in the [autoexec] section
(assuming that your games are in C:\GAMES):

Bricks:(1) The Caps Lock key is not handled correctly. The fix for
this is to issue the command SET SDL_DISABLE_LOCK_KEYS=1 before running
DOSBox. You also need to overwrite the included SDL.DLL with the newer
V1.2.14, available from
http://www.libsdl.org/release/SDL-1.2.14-win32.zip
.
(2) The screen adjustment feature in the main menu does not work
(unimportant).
(3) The numeric keypad 0/Ins cannot be used to move the bat right; the
dedicated Ins key must be used instead.
(4) Using the Home key when instructed to "press a key" causes the
game to quit to DOS soon afterwards, for some reason.